The birth of a child, unfortunately, is not always and not for everyone becomes a joyful event. It is not uncommon to meet men who tend to "run away from fatherhood," and sometimes the mothers themselves give rise to doubts. The analysis for establishing paternity is intended to resolve such doubts.
With the help of such analyzes, not only paternity is established, but also motherhood (for example, if there is a suspicion that the child has been replaced in the hospital), as well as kinship in general.
Paternity analysis can be carried out either privately or at the request of the court.
Blood group analysis
In some cases, in order to exclude the fact of paternity, it is enough to compare the blood groups and the Rh factor of the mother, child and the alleged father (of course, we are talking about those cases when the fact of motherhood is beyond doubt). Several combinations can be named that absolutely exclude paternity: the mother and the alleged father have blood group I, and the child has some other; the alleged father has blood group IV, and the child has the first, or vice versa; the child has a II blood group, but neither the mother nor the alleged father has either II or IV groups, the same is the case with the III group; both the mother and the alleged father are Rh negative, and the child is positive.
A blood test for the group and Rh factor can exclude paternity, but not confirm it. If, according to these indicators, a man, in principle, can be the father of a child, this does not mean that he is, because there are millions of people in the world with the same blood groups. A more accurate analysis is needed to establish paternity. This is DNA analysis.
DNA analysis
The DNA molecule - the carrier of hereditary information - is located in the nucleus of every cell of the human body in the form of 22 pairs of chromosomes. Hereditary information is encoded as a sequence of four nucleotides - adenine paired with thymine and guanine paired with cytosine. DNA is divided into separate sections - genes, each of which encodes the synthesis of a specific protein. To date, scientists know 25,000 genes. Their nucleotide composition is similar in all people, but there are variable regions of DNA (they are called DNA polymorphisms) that occur with a frequency of no more than 1% in the population. It is these variable areas that are compared during the analysis to establish kinship in general and paternity in particular.
Experts compare 16 variable regions of DNA. The coincidence of any of them can be an accident, but the probability of a coincidence of all areas is 1:10 billion. Considering that there are no such number of people on the entire planet, such a coincidence cannot be accidental.
The greatest accuracy of the analysis is provided by taking genetic material (blood, saliva or scraping from the inner surface of the cheek) not only from the child and the alleged father, but also from the mother.
There are factors that can distort the test results: blood transfusion or bone marrow transplant. Paternity analysis can be done at least six months after these procedures.
